They have kind of what you want out. It is a notebook with a touchscreen which can be turned to make it into a sort of ipad like notebook or a noteboook with a keyboard. I dont know how expensive it is or how good it is i just saw a ubuntu demo on it.

Sounds to me like you need something on the order of this: www.google.com/imgres - if it's the one I'm thinking of, it's touchscreen, folds down flat but also closes the way you'd expect. No ePaper, I don't think, but of course you could adjust the brightness and resolution to be more eye-friendly.

And what's wrong with interactive whiteboards and online homework assignments? I've used both and they worked fine...

Oh! You mean something different than I mean with the whiteboards then.

Haha - if it's set up right you can tell who did the work. If you mean you can't verify the child did it, that's no different than paper where you can't tell if someone else did the paper for him and he just copied...

I didn't think of you living in a poor area though - that's pretty much a dealbreaker, huh...

so basically you want something like this (much smarter in my opinion)

it's basically just a giant itouch....they spent all that money trying to make the mp3 player smaller and smaller, and then they went and made it huge...just another apple gimmick (which basically all of their products are)

I think it is about where the iPhone is when that was release. Give it time, the apps that are modified or written for the iPad will make or break it.

Personally, its going to make a killer commuters computer, and that is what its selling me on so far!

At the end of the day, if apple had managed to sqeeze every feature that we wanted into it it would have ended up being like the macbook air, great, but way overpriced.

I think apple were aiming for a lower price point, hence less features, I just hope that that price low price point translates over to the uk.

(regarding the picture, I understand them all, but there is loads of free software on the app store.. once can find a free version of about anything, if you want something that does it better, you pay.)

If iPad sales turn out to be similar to the iPhone it will probably drop in price after a few months. Or just wait until the 2^nd version comes out, the first one drops in price, then buy the first one.

You can now also download and read books on iPad from Amazon Kindle store (in addition to Apple iBooks ). When you buy iPad you just need to download and install the Kindle app and then you will be able to download and read books from both online stores: Apple iBooks and Amazon Kindle store. The iBooks store currently has about 30,000 free books and about 60,000 books from most major publishers. Every book in the store allows you to download a free sample (sometimes more than 50 pages long) Price of books is between $9.99 and $14.99. Kindle store, of course, offers a far larger selection of books than iBooks with more than 620,000 paid and free books including the latest best sellers and new releases. Books at Kindle store are less expensive and their price is typically less than $9.99. The Kindle app is optimized for the iPad, providing users the ability to read Kindle books using this easy-to-use interface.

I would like to point out that ANY android tablet on ANY wireless service provider can use Amazon book store as well as many other bookstores. Aldiko is one, i belive o'reily media has its own bookstore app.

It's a great entertainment system, there's a bunch of good games, it's cheaper then a laptop but has the same basic needs (photos, E-mail, internet, calculator, calendar, address book, righting, facebooking, ect) in a nice sized screen, the keyboard is a bit small, but you easely get used to it (easier then the Iphone).

It's the same price, or more expensive, than laptops with many times the memory capacity, a real keyboard, and an actual way of getting photos off your memory card and into the device. Laptops are tougher, easier to fix, do more, and are not locked to a propriety software that can be switched on and off remotely, at random, by the people who you think you bought it off, but actually you only leased it from them.

But those laptops don't have the awesomely cool logo of awesomeness, for which any superficial idiot intelligent consumer should be willing to pay a hefty premium. Plus, didn't you know that every iPad has been individually blessed with slightly yellow "holy water" from the Glorious Jobs Himself?

All I've done is play with one at the store. When i came to get a iPod Touch for my mom, the 2 or so tables were open. When we came back to get some iTunes money, I couldn't see one. Anyways, all it is is a large iPod touch, with... I don't what it has over the iPod touch except 3G on the more expensive models.